Artist of the Month

Artist of the month May 2026

George Clausen

George Clausen absorbed a range of Continental influences to become a significant plein-air artist of scenes of rural life in oil, watercolour and pastel. The striking, sometime stark naturalism that he learned from Bastien-Lepage and Millet gave way to a light-filled, atmospheric Impressionism. While promoting new developments in painting as a leading member of the New English Art Club, he was eventually accepted by more established societies of artists, including the Royal Academy, becoming a notable Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools. In addition to his distinctive landscapes – both with and without figures – he essayed portraits, nudes, interiors and still life compositions, and produced occasional, but significant murals, one of which was recognised with a knighthood.

George Clausen was born at 8 William Street, Regent’s Park, London, on 18 April 1852, the second of five children of the Danish decorative painter, Jurgen (George) Johnson Clausen, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Fillan).

On leaving St Mark’s School, King’s Road, Chelsea, in 1867, Clausen became an apprentice in the drawing office of Messrs 176 Trollope & Sons, a leading firm of decorators. While there, he also took drawing lessons with John Leghorn, which prepared him for a course of evening classes, on a two-year scholarship, at the National Art Training School, South Kensington. During his time there, he won two of its gold medals for design (in 1868 and 1870). By 1871, he had moved with his family to 9 Stafford Terrace, Fulham Road.

As the result of a commission to decorate the house of the history painter, Edwin Long, Clausen became the artist’s researcher, and received assistance from him in his development as an artist. Taking Long’s advice, Clausen visited Belgium and Holland during the years 1875-76. He studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp under Joseph Van Lerius and, absorbing the influence of painters of the Hague School, began to take an interest in working en plein air. The results included High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuider Zee (Nottingham Castle Museum), which he showed successfully as his first exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1876. In the same year, he was elected an associate of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (becoming a full member in 1879).

Believing that he could learn more from a formal art education, Clausen went to Paris in 1876, in the hope of entering the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, but found it closed. He then considered working under Carolus-Duran, only to be shocked by ‘sloppy paint and bitumen all over the place’, and so returned to London. There he learned not only from the successful genre works of William Quiller Orchardson, Marcus Stone and James Tissot, but also from the experiments of James McNeill Whistler. By the end of the 1870s, he and his family were living at 4 The Mall, Park Road, Haverstock Hill, and he was establishing himself in his own studio.

In 1881, Clausen married fellow artist, Agnes Webster, in Kings Lynn, and they settled first in the village of Childwick Green, near St Albans, Hertfordshire, moving to Grove House, Fag End Road, Cookham Dean, Berkshire, in 1885. They would have three sons and two daughters; Margaret would marry the artist, Thomas Derrick, while Katharine would herself become an artist.

Clausen’s move to the country marked his increasing focus on rural themes, interpreted through a broad technique that involved the use of square-headed brushes. He was influenced in this approach by developments in France, which he visited on painting trips, including that to Brittany in 1882, and for further study, spending a term at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury in 1883 (the year that he was elected to the new Institute of Painters in Oil Colours). He was especially inspired by the example of Jules Bastien-Lepage, whose work he had first seen at the Grosvenor Gallery, and would do much to promote him in England, as exemplified by the article, ‘Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism’, published in The Scottish Art Review in 1888. He also had his own French success, when he was awarded a silver medal at the Exposition universelle, in Paris, in 1889.

In 1884, critics had attacked the harsh realism of Clausen’s painting, Labourers after Dinner (private collection), when it was shown at the Royal Academy. This encouraged him to help found the New English Art Club in 1886, and he – like his friend and fellow member, Henry La Thangue – would remain a keen advocate of the reform of the Royal Academy after he returned to exhibiting there regularly in 1891. In that year, he and his family moved to Bishops Farm House, Widdington, near Newport, Essex, and many of the local farmyards, barns and fields would feature his work.

Attracted to a range of modern painting, Clausen tempered his monumental depictions of the agricultural labourer, influenced by Jean-François Millet, with an increasingly bright palette, derived from the Impressionists, and an atmospheric use of pastel, inspired by Edgar Degas. However, he strengthened his association with more established institutions, and was elected to the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (ARWS 1889; RWS 1898) and the Royal Academy (ARA 1895; RA 1908). His standing at home was confirmed by a series of solo shows – the first of which was held at the Goupil Gallery, London, in 1902 – while his wider reputation was consolidated through the award of medals at a number of international exhibitions, notably those in Chicago (1893), Brussels (1897) and Paris (1900). He also visited Hungary in 1894 and Italy in both 1898 and 1903.

Having taught at the Royal Academy Schools since the mid 1890s, Clausen became its Professor of Painting during the years 1903-6 (and would become temporary Director and Master of the Painting School in 1926-27). This academic position gave him the opportunity to urge the traditional study of the Old Masters in lectures that were published as Six Lectures on Painting (1904) and Aims and Ideals in Art (1906). From 1905, he maintained a London home and studio at 61 Carlton Hill, St John’s Wood. In 1909, he was master of the Art Workers’ Guild.

Clausen’s own work, exhibited in solo shows at the Leicester Galleries (1909 and 1912), demonstrated how tradition and innovation could complement each other, and it seemed no contradiction for an exponent of Impressionism to undertake public commissions. He was an original member of the Faculty of Painting for the British School at Rome (1912), an official war artist during the First World War (assigned to Woolwich Arsenal) and later a mural decorator of, especially, St Stephen’s Hall, Westminster (1927). The last of those projects led to his being knighted (1927) in a period in which he continued to be elected to exhibiting societies. He became an honorary member of the Royal Society of British Artists (1923) and a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water-Colours (1926). Retrospectives of his work were held at Barbizon House in 1928 and 1933. In these later years, he painted numerous landscapes around the Essex village of Duton Hill, where, from 1917, he maintained ‘Hillside’ cottage. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he and Lady Clausen left their London home to live with their daughter, Margaret, and her husband, Thomas Derrick, at St Finians Farm, Cold Ash, Thatcham          near Newbury, Berkshire. He died there on 22 November 1944, eight months after his wife.

Artist of the month April 2026

Anna Ancher

1859 to 1935

Anna Ancher was the only member of the Skagen Painters, an artists’ colony on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, to be born in the town of Skagen. Her parents, Erik and Ane Brøndum, owned the remote town’s only inn. From an early age, Ancher was exposed to visiting artists’ artwork and discussions.

As a woman, Ancher was not allowed to enroll at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Beginning in 1875, however, Ancher attended a private art school in Copenhagen run by Danish artist Vilhelm Kyhn. She returned to train with Kyhn for three subsequent winters. She also learned from painters who visited Skagen, including Karl Madsen and Michael Ancher, her future husband. Unusual for her time—thanks to her family’s support and the eased finances that accompanied Michael’s and Anna’s professional successes—Ancher continued painting even after the birth of the couple’s daughter, Helga, in 1883.

Ancher was part of the “Modern Breakthrough,” a Scandinavian movement in art and literature that, like French Naturalism and Realism, rejected idealization, and instead sought to capture the “real.” Ancher, especially, sought to capture the fleeting effects of light on her canvases, demonstrating the influence of Impressionist works she saw during trips to Paris in 1885 and 1888. She painted primarily small-scale interior scenes, reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin.

 

Artist of the month March 2026

Beryl Cook

Beryl Francis Lansley was born in Egham, Surrey in 1926, one of four sisters. Her parents, Adrian S. B. Lansley and Ella Farmer-Francis, separated very early and her mother moved to Reading, Berkshire with her daughters. Beryl attended Kendrick School there, but left education at fourteen and started to work in a variety of jobs.[9] Having moved to London towards the end of the Second World War, Beryl tried working as a model and showgirl. In 1948 she married her childhood friend John Cook, who was in the merchant navy. When he retired from seafaring, they briefly ran a pub in Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk. Their son John was born in 1950,[10] and in 1956, the family left to live in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). They remained in Africa for the next decade, where in 1960 Cook produced her first painting, Hangover.[11]
The family returned to England in the mid-1960s, and in 1965 moved to East Looe, Cornwall, where Beryl focused more on her painting. They moved to Plymouth in 1968, where they bought a guest house on the Hoe. Cook divided her time between running the guest house and painting. In the mid-1970s, her works caught the attention of one of their guests, who put her in touch with the management of Plymouth Arts Centre, where her first exhibition took place in November 1975. The show was a great success and resulted in a magazine cover feature in The Sunday Times. This was followed by a 1976 exhibition at the Portal Gallery in London, where Cook continued to exhibit regularly until her death.
She soon became, in the estimation of Julian Spalding, the most genuinely popular living artist in Britain.[12]
Her first book of collected works was published by John Murray in 1978, and in 1979 a film was made for LWT’s The South Bank Show in which she discussed her work with Melvyn Bragg. Cook collaborated with such authors as Edward Lucie-Smith and Nanette Newman, providing illustrations for their books. Until the early 2000s, she regularly published books of her own art, such as Beryl Cook’s New York (1985) which had been inspired by her three-week visit to New York City in 1983.[13]
In 1994, she received the Best-Selling Published Artist Award from the Fine Art Trade Guild. In 1995 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire. She did not attend the official ceremony, due to her shyness, accepting the honour at a quieter ceremony in Plymouth the following year. The Royal Mail reproduced one of her paintings as a first-class postage stamp. In 2002, her painting The Royal Couple featured in the Golden Jubilee exhibition in London. Tiger Aspect Productions made two animated films called Bosom Pals using characters from her paintings, voiced by Dawn French, Rosemary Leach, Alison Steadman and Timothy Spall; they were broadcast in February 2004. Channel 4 News produced a short film on Beryl and her work in 2005, and she was also the featured artist in and episode of BBC Two’s The Culture Show in 2006.
Beryl Cook died on 28 May 2008 at home in Plymouth. Peninsula Arts of the Plymouth University mounted a major retrospective exhibition in November that year. Two books devoted to her were published: Beryl Cook 1926-2008 and The World of Beryl Cook. In 2010, two of her paintings were used as part of the Rude Britannia exhibition at the Tate Britain. Her paintings have been acquired by the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth Art Gallery and Durham Museum.

Artist of the Month – February 2026

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer’s themes of German history and the horrors of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.

In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting Margarete (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Celan’s well-known poem “Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”).

His works are characterised by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture’s dark past, and unrealised potential, in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or historical places. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism.

Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992. Since 2008, he has lived and worked primarily in Paris. In 2018, he was awarded Austrian citizenship.

 

Artist of the Month – January 2026

 Michael Reardon.

Michael Reardon has been painting in watercolor for over thirty years. An avid traveler, he uses watercolor to record his observations, convey a sense of place and light, and communicate his impressions of the built, natural, and imagined worlds. He works from his studio in Oakland, California.

In 2005 he was the recipient of the prestigious Gabriel Prize from the Western European Architecture Foundation, which enabled him to spend three months painting in Paris. Originally trained as an architect with a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley, he was an architectural illustrator for over thirty years.  In 2004 he was awarded the Hugh Ferriss Memorial Prize, the premier award in the field of architectural illustration.

His watercolors have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the annual shows of the National Watercolor Society, the American Watercolor Society, and the California Art Club. In 2011 he presented a solo show at the Thomas Reynolds Gallery in San Francisco.

He is a signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society, Watercolor West, and the California Watercolor Association. He is also the author of Watercolor Techniques: Painting Light and Color in Landscapes and Cityscapes from North Light Books.

 

Artist of the Month – December 2025

Stanley William Hayter.

Stanley William Hayter was a British painter and printmaker associated with Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. He was notably the founder of one of the most influential print shops in the 20th-century, Atelier 17, which worked with Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and others. “The way we work, there is no sort of professor and student deal going on here,” he once said of his methods. “I have always had the theory since I started this thing that if you are going to get anything done about this craft it is going to take a lot of people to do it and you have got to work with them.” Born on December 27, 1901 in Hackney, United Kingdom, he studied chemistry and geology at King’s College in London before working in Iran for the Anglo-Persian oil company. Moving to Paris in 1926, he briefly enrolled at the Académie Julian before befriending the Polish-born artist Joseph Hecht, who taught him engraving techniques. A year later, he opened Atelier 17, Hayter’s background in chemistry led him to treat printmaking as a science, and he experimented with a number of techniques, including viscosity printing, gaufrage, and soft-ground etching. Hayter fled Europe in 1939 due to World War II, establishing another print shop in New York where he continued to work until returning to Paris in 1950. The artist died on May 4, 1988 in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.

 

Artist of the month November 2025

Jenny Saville

About

Human perception of the body is so acute and knowledgeable that the smallest hint of a body can trigger recognition.
—Jenny Saville

In her depictions of the human form, Jenny Saville transcends the boundaries of both classical figuration and modern abstraction. Oil paint, applied in heavy layers, becomes as visceral as flesh itself, each painted mark maintaining a supple, mobile life of its own. As Saville pushes, smears, and scrapes the pigment over her large-scale canvases, the distinctions between living, breathing bodies and their painted representations begin to collapse.

Born in 1970 in Cambridge, England, Saville attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1988 to 1992, spending a term at the University of Cincinnati in 1991. Her studies focused her interest in “imperfections” of flesh, with all of its societal implications and taboos. Saville had been captivated with these details since she was a child; she has spoken of seeing the work of Titian and Tintoretto on trips with her uncle, and of observing the way that her piano teacher’s two breasts—squished together in her shirt—became one large mass. While on a fellowship in Connecticut in 1994, Saville was able to observe a New York City plastic surgeon at work. Studying the reconstruction of human flesh was formative in her perception of the body—its resilience, as well as its fragility. Her time with the surgeon fueled her examination into the seemingly infinite ways that flesh is transformed and disfigured. She explored medical pathologies; viewed cadavers in the morgue; examined animals and meat; studied classical and Renaissance sculpture; and observed intertwined couples, mothers with their children, individuals whose bodies challenge gender dichotomies, and more.

A member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), the loose group of painters and sculptors who came to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Saville reinvigorated contemporary figurative painting by challenging the limits of the genre and raising questions about society’s perception of the body and its potential. Though forward-looking, her work reveals a deep awareness, both intellectual and sensory, of how the body has been represented over time and across cultures—from antique and Hindu sculpture, to Renaissance drawing and painting, to the work of modern artists such as Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Pablo Picasso. In the striking faces, jumbled limbs, and tumbling folds of her paintings, one may perceive echoes of Titian’s Venus of Urbino (c. 1532), Rubens’s Christ in the Descent from the Cross (1612–14), Manet’s Olympia (1863), and faces and bodies culled from magazines and tabloid newspapers. Saville’s paintings refuse to fit smoothly into an historical arc; instead, each body comes forward, autonomous, voluminous, and always refusing to hide.

 

Artist of the Month – October 2025

Josef Albers.

German-born American artist Josef Albers (1888–1976) is regarded as one of the foremost abstract artists and educators of the 20th century, deeply influencing both European and American modernism. His artistic practice focused intensely on colour theory and perception, as famously demonstrated by his Homage to the Square series. This ground breaking work examined the psychological and optical effects of colour through compositions of simple geometric forms designed to engage viewers in unique visual experiences.

Albers was educated at the Königliche Bayerische Akademie der Bildenden Kunst and later served as a key faculty member at The Bauhaus. Following the closure of The Bauhaus, Albers and his wife, the artist Anni Albers, immigrated to the United States and joined the faculty of Black Mountain College. There, Albers developed a revolutionary teaching philosophy based on experimentation and visual “defamiliarization” to heighten sensory awareness. His pedagogical influence grew when Albers joined Yale University to establish its design program in 1950. Interaction of Colour, which Yale University Press published in 1963, encapsulates the artist’s lifelong research and remains foundational in colour studies today.

His work can be seen in prominent institutions worldwide, including the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat, Bottrop, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal; Morgan Library and Museum, New York, New York; Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden, Norway; Mudec, Museo delle Culture, Milan, Italy; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.

Albers has exhibited with GRAY in two group exhibitions: Artists/Bennington in 1967 and Prints/New Works in 1977.

 

Artist of the Month September 2025

David Mankin.

David Mankin lives and works in the southwest of Cornwall. His dynamic and vivid abstracted Cornish landscape paintings have been exhibited in London and Cornwall, and he has shown in a number of London art fairs. His paintings are in numerous private and corporate art collections.

David’s abstract paintings not only draw inspiration from the dramatic Cornish coastline; the wild, empty moors; the big skies; but also the raw, physical elements of the landscape including the rocky outcrops; beach boulders; storm debris; winding farm tracks; surging seas and the ancient fields bordered with stone hedges. He enjoys getting out into the landscape and the elements that shape it – wind, sea, rain and man-made. These are the experiences that manifest themselves in his paintings.